In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that amounts to a veto threat, the administration said it was “deeply concerned” that the proposal would divert resources from criminal prosecution to civil enforcement, and create “unnecessary bureaucracy.” Currently prosecutors have authority to file criminal charges.

Supporters of the bill include the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Association

Cox Communications, the third-largest cable Internet provider in the U.S., announced Tuesday that starting February, it will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on its high-speed Internet network in Kansas and Arkansas.

Our friend at Cox is about to get selectively friendly toward Internet content.

Personally, I don’t really mind this, because I live in California and games are categorized as time-sensitive. For those who are more concerned, you can learn more

More surprises
The technical sessions at the event contained their own surprises.

For example, Nvidia effectively seized control of an old Intel marketing buzzword: “balanced.”

I expect many consumers will be dissatisfied with Clarkdale and Arrandale systems when compared with GPU-equipped machines. Intel will presumably use its best available graphics engines, ensuring full Blu-ray compatibility and the ability to play mainstream games, but they still won’t qualify

This post was updated at 3:33 p.m. PST with more information about supply.

The software maker had previously said it would offer the family pack, but had not said how much it would charge. (It actually inadvertently confirmed the family pack by referencing it in the licensing terms of a test version of Windows 7 that leaked onto the Internet.) The family pack covers those moving from XP or Vista to Windows 7.

In the U.S. and 11 other countries, upgrade codes can b

The idea is, as Odom put it, Friendfeed for dating. Users create a profile and then are able to peruse “life streams” of potential matches by viewing their Facebook profile and updates, their Twitter feed, the music they listen to on Last.FM and even what they’re watching on Hulu and Netflix and their pictures on Flickr.

(Credit:
Gelato)

Will this approach to online dating work? It is, of course, too early to tell, and Gelato will have to contend with the fact that anyone in

The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap “Local” on the
mobile browser and you’ll see a Start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You’ll need to have the My Location feature enabled.

(Credit: CC Michell Zappa/Flickr)

Rumors of an Apple tablet have been swirling for a couple of years, but speculation has ramped up in recent months, including reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been focusing intensely on a tablet device since returning to work in June after a liver transplant.

Tchao, who rejoined Apple on Monday as vice president of product marketing, most recently served as general manager for Nike Techlab, where he oversaw creation of n

It’s a simple and attractive system, and in that it makes collecting money easier than putting up a PayPal link, it is a functional competitor. But Piryx is not a completely new payment system. Piryx charges credit cards and hooks into checking accounts. Then, like a typical credit card processing system, it deposits funds in its users’ merchant accounts. It takes a significant percentage of funds collected: 4.5 percent on the high end, down to 4 percent as the money increases. (PayPal charg

A new update to eBay’s free iPhone application (App Store link) enables users to better keep an eye on items they’re interested in buying.

(via MacRumors.com)

(Credit:
CNET)

The app isn’t just about viewing, though; users can now use it to make payments. Using eBay’s PayPal technology–and only PayPal–iPhone users can now make a purchase bid on a new item directly from the device, without having to go back and use a regular computer or deal with the payments

Research In Motion’s slice of the market dropped slightly from 10 percent in February to 8 percent in August. Still, RIM’s Blackberry devices accounted for three of the top 20 smartphones around the world. The Palm OS, running on older units such as the Centro, declined in share from 3 percent in February to 1 percent in August.

The iPhone’s worldwide market share jumped from 33 percent to 40 percent over February to August, according to AdMob’s “August Mobile Metrics Report,” which